World Revolution no.302, March 2007

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World Revolution no.302, March 2007

Stock market fall: World economy on the edge

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“Wall Street suffered its biggest one-day fall yesterday since the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, as a day of hefty stock market falls around the world culminated in a late panic sell-off in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed more than 400 points down amid fears that the US and China - the twin locomotives for the global economy - were about to plunge into recession and that the White House might be preparing air strikes against Iran’s nuclear capability”. (Guardian, 28/2/07)

Stock market falls come and go and economic experts have a very short-term vision. On the day this one happened, one US economic guru warned that “this could be the lull before the storm.” Elsewhere Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group, said “As the afternoon has progressed, there seems to be a sense of panic among some professional investors …There seems to be just an air of nothing is safe anymore, there’s nowhere to go and people are rotating into bonds as a safe haven.”

Two days later, “Dominic Rossi, head of global equities at Threadneedle Investment Services, summed up the City’s insouciant mood after the biggest tremor in globa/ markets since 9/11: ‘Nothing has happened over the past 48 hours that affects our view of the world and the positive outlook for equity markets’” (Guardian, 1/3/7)

The tremors of 27/2 may not mean an imminent global recession. But they do indeed give us a glimpse of the real underlying state of the world economy.

For years now, we have been told that the American economy is sound, strong, a locomotive for the world. What we haven’t been told is that this ‘recovery’ after the recessions of the 80s has been based on a growing mountain of debt. In other words, the US (and global) economy is actually bankrupt, sunk in a deep crisis of overproduction, but keeps going anyway by creating a vast artificial market, supplemented by creating a casino economy where people are involved in all kinds of artificial jobs. In Britain, for example, the biggest contribution to ‘Gross National Product’ comes from…landlords, an economic category which produces absolutely nothing.

For years now, we have also been told that the startling boom in China shows the way forward. Four consecutive years of growth at 10% or more, a 67% increase in its trade surplus. Surely that proves that Mr Rossi is right to be optimistic about the positive outlook for global capitalism. If China can do it, why not the rest of the world?

Simple: China can do it precisely because the traditionally developed countries can’t. China’s industrialisation is based on the deindustrialisation of America, Britain and major parts of Europe. Vast profits can be made in China because the Chinese working class is paying for this ‘economic miracle’ through monstrous rates of exploitation – low wages, long hours, minimum protection from industrial accidents and pollution. Levels of exploitation that the working class in the central capitalist countries has shown it will not accept, much as the bourgeoisie would like it to.

China has thus served as a willing sponge for all the capital that could no longer be profitably invested in the more established capitalist countries. But despite all the talk of the creation of a ‘new middle class’ and the mushrooming of a ‘consumer culture’ in China, the majority of the Chinese population remain desperately poor and the greater part of Chinese industrial output is geared towards exports. The world is being flooded with cheap Chinese products and the limits to its capacity to absorb them are not hard to spot. If the ‘consumer boom’ in countries like Britain is based on trillions of pounds of domestic debt, what happens when the debts (or the interest on the debts) get called in and people and companies have to stop spending?

This is why there are all the fears about the ‘overheating’ of the Chinese economy. The recent shares slump was sparked off by a trivial incident – the announcement that the government was about to crack down on illegal trading in shares in its economy. But the real nightmare that haunts the bourgeoisie is that the Chinese economy, by ‘overheating’ the machine that spews out this endless line of commodities, is heading for an open crisis of overproduction which would have a devastating effect on the state of the world economy.

In short: the ‘prosperity’ of the world economy is built on sand and the sands are beginning to shift. World capitalism, which has been in decline for nearly a hundred years, has found numerous ways of manipulating its own laws and slowing down its descent into the abyss, but only at the cost of preparing new and even more dangerous convulsions in the future.

It is also highly significant that a second aspect of the recent fall in share prices was a new round of speculation about a possible US attack on Iran. Capitalism’s economic crisis has always pushed the system towards the insane ‘solution’ of war. No doubt the stock markets’ jitters were eased when the Bush administration interrupted its sabre rattling to announce that it would be opening talks with Iran and Syria to find ways of stabilising the situation in Iraq. But as we show in the article in this issue, such diplomatic expedients do not in any way contradict capital’s fundamental drive towards war and self-destruction.

If we add that capitalism’s bloated and unhealthy growth is now unquestionably posing a profound threat to the planetary environment, it is evident that the perspective this system holds in store for us is one of unprecedented catastrophe – economic, military, and ecological.

The bourgeoisie, despite all its optimistic whistling, is well aware that things can only get worse. This is why Gordon Brown has just announced that one million public sector workers in Britain will have their pay rises pegged to below 2%. The casino economy has ‘hidden’ inflation in recent years through the housing boom, but inflationary pressures are building up throughout the economy, and the workers, as ever, are being asked to pay.

In the 1970s, inflation was the price we paid for avoiding recession. In the 1980s, recession was judged a better option. But today, we are faced with the threat of both at the same time. This is why, for example, that great ‘model’ of modernisation and growth, Airbus, has announced thousands of job cuts in France, Germany and Britain. This announcement was greeted with the spontaneous walkout of thousands of workers across France and Germany.

Faced with rising prices, wage cuts, job losses today, faced with the prospect of a cataclysmic future if capitalism is allowed to continue, the only path ahead for the working class across the world is the path of struggle. WR 3/3/7

Recent and ongoing:

Resolution on the British situation (part 2)

'Stop The War Coalition' Demo: “Another march from A to B”

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The Stop the War demonstration on Saturday 24 February was described by an indymedia contributor as “yet another march from A to B and listen to speeches event, organised by the left of capital in cooperation with the police” (Indymedia[3]) and he added “don’t expect a change in imperialist policy in Whitehall”. There is a long history of such events failing to make any change to imperialist policy, most notably the millions who came onto the streets of several continents to protest against the war in Iraq just before it was launched in 2003. These large demonstrations, whether in the USA, Britain or elsewhere had no impact on government policy whatsoever.

This raises the question of why anti-war demonstrations never stop war. Is it a matter of more militant tactics? Would it be different if there were “large scale, effective, direct anti-war action”? It is not enough to point to the equally ineffective demonstrations that have taken place at Greenham Common and various other military bases over the years. The question still remains whether there is any kind of tactic that could make an anti-war demonstration effective. This can only be answered by an understanding of why nations go to war: is it by choice with a view to a quick buck on the oil market? Or are they forced into it by the very conditions of the capitalist system today? Today, and since the early 20th century, no country has been able to stand aside from imperialism as each is forced to try and expand at the expense of its rivals. This is why the USA and Britain have found themselves bogged down in the chaos they created with the Iraq war. And there are no innocent nations or factions, however small and weak they are all inevitably drawn into imperialism: from ‘brave little Belgium’ backed by Britain, France and Russia in World War I, through the PLO backed by Russia in the Cold War, to Hizbollah backed by Iran today. When we look at the carnage in Iraq today, like any other imperialist conflict, we are not seeing an aberration but the normal operation of capitalism. “Violated, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society” as Rosa Luxemburg said in 1916, and used in the signature quote from the indymedia contributor cited above.

This is why calling for all occupying troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, for no replacement of Trident and no attack on Iran, as the demonstration did, is utopian. Peace will not be possible and imperialism will not be ended until capitalism is overthrown by the class war.

However, the demonstration did have one slogan that was not utopian, ‘Bush and Blair must go’. Here we descend to the level of farce, since their tenure in office is coming to an end anyway, and their going already decided, especially for Blair who will be gone in a matter of months.

So why hold demonstrations?

Four years ago there was an illusion in the power of demonstrations and democracy to influence government policy. Today even the illusion that the Iraq Study Group and Democratic victories in the USA might attenuate its hawkish imperialist policies has been dashed. And we can be quite sure that none of the organisers, either then or now, had any such illusions. In fact in 2003 the leader of the LibDems was quite open about this, stating that once war started they would support ‘our boys’ in Iraq.

Nevertheless, bourgeois democracy has a need for such demonstrations against unpopular policies. When the democratic mechanisms respond to the views of the public in this way it is not to allow them to influence state policy, but to provide a safety valve and above all to provide false answers to the questions being raised by the state of capitalism today. When workers and particularly young workers see the constant and growing local wars this raises the question of what future capitalism has in store for us, in the same way that growing unemployment or the destruction of pensions does. An anti-war demonstration provides false answers – call for the end of this war, the removal of this or that leader, the exposure of this or that scandal, anything to drown out the discussion of why capitalism cannot be anything else, why it has outlived its use to humanity and become nothing but a source of chaos and misery.

Revolutionaries, those who hold to a clear internationalist position against all imperialist forces of whatever scale, whether official, guerrilla or paramilitary, need to be at these demonstrations precisely to respond to the questioning of those beginning to see through the spectacle of the anti-war demo. We do so in order to stimulate discussion, not to drown it out, to show the roots of imperialism as an essential part of capitalism today instead of providing false hopes. This is why we will understand more about the Iraq war by reading the Junius pamphlet written by Rosa Luxemburg in 1916 than by listening to the speeches at the end of hundreds of anti-war demonstrations. Alex 3/3/07

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British Airways: Workers’ anger against union sabotage

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In mid-January, over 10,000 British Airways cabin workers in the Transport and General Workers Union division, BASSA, voted overwhelmingly and enthusiastically for a strike involving pay, conditions and general discontent. The unfolding of events since then at BA is a real, practical demonstration of the anti-working class nature of the trade unions. Over the years the unions at BA, working hand in glove with management, have implemented massive attacks on the wages and conditions of the workers. And when, in January, these workers had enough and responded to these attacks by wanting to fight back, the unions, working from their deliberately divisive structures, sabotaged that very struggle at the same time as delivering up another crap deal. The unions at BA have undermined any effective fight back, in the first place by isolating the cabin crew from other workers, even from other cabin crew in different unions.

It’s not just the leadership that’s the problem. The T&G head Tony Woodley - member of the ‘awkward squad’, ‘militant leftie’, ‘tough negotiator’ - showed his colours in the carve up of Peugeot workers from 2000 onwards. The problem exists in the whole union structure, particularly its base, in this case the rank and file BASSA committee of convenors and stewards.

The cabin crew strike was called off by the union, and the pay deal ‘negotiated’ gives an upper pay ceiling of £18,600, which still means a pay reduction of £8,000 in relation to the pre-1997 ceiling (‘negotiated’ away by the unions) of £26,600, “the best deal that could be achieved” according to the T&GWU (The Independent, 3/3/07). Not only was this pay cut maintained with the same workers doing the same job for two different pay rates, but the union has also asked for more wage bands, thus imposing more divisions on the workers. As well as this, the union ‘deal’ over conditions has meant the latter will deteriorate and management-bullying tactics over sickness and attendance have been given the green light. The cabin workers are furious. Woodley first of all postponed, then cancelled the address he was to make at a union meeting to defend the ‘deal’ because of the anger and resentment felt against the union. BASSA had to shut down its website because of the level of anger directed against it. A 9-man rank and file BASSA committee had accepted the deal and the two members who voted against it have since resigned. The workers’ anger has been focussed on the rank and file committee and more of them are reportedly resigning. Working within the union structure, even, and especially at the base of the union, rank and file committees will be forced, sooner or later, to sell out the workers and toe the union line. Putting trust or confidence in such union committees means that from the beginning the workers are fighting with two hands tied behind their backs. As far as the cabin crews are concerned any attempt to remedy the situation and fight back against these attacks must begin with their self-organisation and the election of their own delegates in order to confront the inevitable union sabotage. Threats by some BASSA workers to join another union will simply put them back on the union merry-go-round and back in the same position, having learned nothing.

At BA the T&G has 20,000 in its union, Amicus has 6200, the GMB 5000 and Balpa 2750. Amicus has 1500 cabin crew members, and check-in workers are split between different unions. The last ‘deal’ organised by the T&G and the GMB in 2004 was a three-year pay and condition cut, one of the sources of the growing anger of workers earlier this year. The carve up and division of workers by the unions is again reflected over the cuts in the pension scheme, with Amicus and Balpa recommending it, the GMB rejecting, and the T&G “consulting”.

At the present time, the role of the unions, as part of the state’s attack, is to keep workers divided and confused, and prevent any effective fight back. This is clearly shown in their role at BA. Beyond BA, there are about a hundred thousand workers in and around Heathrow, many divided up by the same unions and all of them suffering similar attacks to those at BA. Beyond the divisions, sell-outs, confusion and lies sown by the unions, the workers need to start from their own mass meetings and their own organisation in a similar vein to the autonomous action by the baggage handlers last year in support of Gate Gourmet workers. The current victory of the unions and management over the workers at BA will only be temporary because issues are unresolved, more attacks are needed and the workers will respond. What’s important is they learn the lessons of their own struggle. Baboon, 28/2/7

Geographical:

Recent and ongoing:

America and Iran head towards bloodshed

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“I don’t know how many times the president, secretary Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran” (Guardian 10/2/07). These were the words of US Defence Secretary Gates in February a few days after President Bush threatened Iran with retaliation for its involvement in Iraq and as a US fleet of some 50 ships, including two aircraft carriers and others with cruise missiles, moved within striking distance of Iran. Perhaps not surprisingly, Washington’s actions were taken more seriously than its words and numerous commentators in the press speculated about the likelihood of action against Iran: “The US ‘push back’ against Iran comprises many other elements beyond Iraq. Unconfirmed reports suggest Vice-President Dick Cheney has cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to keep oil production up even as prices fall, to undercut Iran’s main source of foreign currency. Washington is pursuing expanding, non-UN global financial sanctions against Tehran; encouraging and arming a ‘new alignment’ of Sunni Arab Gulf states; and highlighting Iran’s role in ‘supporting terrorism’ in Palestine…Almost any of these developments might produce a casus belli. And when taken together, despite official protestations, they seem to point in only one direction. The Bush administration, an American commentator suggested, is ‘once again spoiling for a fight’” (Guardian, 31/1/07).

The campaign being waged by the US against Iran goes back several years. For much of that time the main issue has been Tehran’s nuclear programme, which was only revealed in 2002. There has been a diplomatic dance between the US, Iran and other countries in and out of the meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency with agreements made and broken, initiatives proposed and ignored, and threats made and reciprocated. A year ago Iran resumed uranium enrichment, leading to a referral to the UN Security Council and first the offer of incentives and then a vote to impose sanctions. The US has made veiled threats of military action while Israel, which bombed an Iraqi nuclear plant in 1980, has been more open.

Iraq provided the second theme with reports of Iranian support for the insurgency leading to the claim that the weapons it had supplied were responsible for the deaths of many American soldiers. The threat to take action against Iranian agents in Iraq was followed just a few hours later by the detention of six Iranians alleged to be members of the Revolutionary Guard. The US has been keen to present evidence to support its claims - such as the serial number of weapons said to confirm their origin in Iran - but such claims, so reminiscent of the ‘intelligence’ used to justify the invasion of Iraq, have been widely ridiculed.

The weakness of US power leads to war

Why is the US making these threats and are they real? Both questions can only be answered by looking at the broader imperialist struggle. Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc the US has come to depend more and more on displays of military force to try and reassert its global dominance. However, all of its efforts, from the first Gulf War through Bosnia, Afghanistan and numerous smaller wars to the invasion of Iraq, have only provoked more challenges. The more the US has shown off its apparent strength the more its real weakness has been exposed. This paradox has been partially explained by no less a person than Francis Fukuyama, the prophet of the end of history and the untrammelled victory of capitalism: “American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely…The Bush doctrine sought to use preventative war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventative war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold” (Guardian 31/1/07). Of course Fukuyama can’t see that this is not the result of particular circumstances but of the general tendency in decomposing capitalism for a generalised free-for-all amongst all states as they struggle for position. The US epitomises this not because it is the worst power but because it is the biggest. In their conduct and intentions the militias in the Middle East and Africa or the bombers in Spain and Britain are no different.

Since the destruction of the Twin Towers the US has waged an offensive around the globe to reassert its authority against all of its rivals, that is against every state and every would-be state and faction. This offensive has collapsed in the streets of Baghdad and the mountains of Afghanistan and has led to serious divisions within the American ruling class over the way to go. The report of the Iraq Study Group, which called for talks with Iran and Syria, was initially ignored by Bush who, in the State of the Union Address, declared that “to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy” and identified “an escalating danger from Shia extremists” who “are determined to dominate the Middle East” and many of whom “take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah”.

The rise of Iranian imperialism

For its part Iran is no more a peace-loving nation that the US. Since the ‘revolution’ of 1979 this Islamic republic has aspired to regional dominance and has resorted readily to war, notably against its regional rival Iraq during the 1980s. Nor have its principles got in the way: in the 1980s it accepted arms supplied by Israel with US agreement and after 9/11 it moved towards the US: “…Iran’s desire for an accommodation with the US has led it to take steps that would once have been unimaginable. In 2001 it backed the US war against Afghanistan; and in 2003 it demonstrated its willingness to cooperate by encouraging Shia groups in Iraq to support the US invasion” (Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2005). This strategy has been very successful: the invasion removed Iraq as a serious rival and the ensuing chaos offered it opportunities too good to resist: “The winner in this conflict is Iran. The US strategy of disbanding the army and de-Ba’athifying Iraq removed Tehran’s traditional enemy from the region, while the US reliance on Shia clerics empowered Iran’s allies inside Iraq. The US now confronts a greatly strengthened Iran because of its own actions” (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2007). Iran has developed its influence across the region and is “emerging as the champion of a new front of struggle that combines Arab nationalism with the rising tide of Islamic resistance” (ibid).

Iran has used the divisions between the great powers to pursue its nuclear ambitions and to cultivate its regional influence under the pretence of supporting its Shia co-religionists and has become more bellicose as the crisis in the Middle East has deepened. The election of the supposedly hardline Ahmadinejad and his nationalistic defence of Iran’s ‘right’ to nuclear power correspond neatly to this regional imperialist strategy. It is not Ahmadinejad who has taken Iran away from the path of moderation supposedly embodied in his predecessor Rafsanjani, but the needs of Iranian imperialism that have produced Ahmadinejad. The radical language, including the calls for the destruction of Israel and the denial of the Holocaust, are a calculated strategy to harness the despair of the layers of impoverished and disorientated workers and peasants throughout the Middle East. That the allegations of intervening in the neighbouring countries and of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons are true is obvious: this is the aspiration and the unavoidable need of any state that aspires to real power.

The rise of Iranian imperialism is a consequence of a point we have often made in recent years: that it is far easier for a second rate power to cause problems for the dominant power than it is for the latter to maintain order. War between the US and Iran may not be inevitable but it is inevitable that their imperialist manoeuvres will lead to more bloodshed. This remains true despite the apparent about-face of the administration over the last few days. Bush now seems to be taking on board the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and has invited both Iran and Syria to take part in talks aiming at the stabilisation of Iraq. This is certainly an admission of weakness on the USA’s part, but experience has shown that the weakening of the ‘Great Satan’ of US imperialism does not bring about an earthly paradise: rather it provides new opportunities for all the ‘Little Satans’ to pursue their own sordid imperialist designs. North, 1/3/07

Geographical:

General and theoretical questions:

Iraq: Daily life has become unbearable

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Baghdad is paralysed by fear. Every night this tortured city resounds to the sound of mortar fire. Using the car, for those who still have one, immediately puts the occupants in mortal danger from heavily armed gangs who can stop the vehicle at any moment and shoot them in cold blood. Every day brings its share of bloody attacks. It is no longer considered proper to give a daily total for the number of dead in a country plunged into the greatest barbarity. More than 200 people were killed in one week in Baghdad at the end of January, and more than 16,800 civilians were killed there in 2006. On its side, the American army announced the death of 3,068 military and associated personnel in the same period. Each day only confirms the worsening of this humanitarian disaster. Shiites have been expelled from the Sunni Al Amariyah quarter in the West of the capital. A Sunni Ba’ath Party rules there. The graffiti proclaims “Death to Muqtada [Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite religious nationalist] and his army of imbeciles!” This reflects what is happening in the whole of the country. In other areas of the capital, like Al-Hurriya, it is the Sunnis who have been forced to flee, also on pain of death. The tension and chaos have reached their worst in Baghdad. Everyone is waiting for a generalised explosion of violence. A majority of the Sunnis are also waiting for an offensive of the armed Mehdi gangs of Shiites at any moment, aiming to kill or expel the Sunnis from the city. All sides are accumulating arms and munitions. So Baghdad is becoming a veritable powder keg. Four years after its intervention in Iraq the American army controls no more than a few fortified zones, leaving the rest of the country to plunge irremediably into the worst kind of bloody anarchy.

America bogged down in Iraq

Some weeks ago in the United States, the Democrat victory in the elections for Congress and the Senate spread a breath of optimism in the bourgeois media. This optimism was reinforced by the proposals put forward by Baker, advisor to Bush senior. American public opinion, with an anti-war majority from now on, could dream of a withdrawal of troops after a reasonable delay. Perhaps even the end of the war in Iraq. That was nothing but an illusion! The Democrats have no alternative proposal. Reality has immediately and dramatically confirmed that there can no longer be peace under capitalism in that region of the world. The budget presented by the American administration envisages a new increase in military spending. It will allocate $622,000 million to the Pentagon, of which $142,000 million is for Iraq. Stuck in the Iraqi quagmire, American imperialism can do nothing but continue its headlong flight. 21,500 extra soldiers are being rapidly deployed for its operations on the ground. The American army, in cooperation with the government police in Baghdad, is preparing a generalised offensive on the capital. Officially its aim is to clear the sectors occupied by the armed anti-American militia. This offensive, like all those preceding it over the last four years, can only end in more massacres and greater chaos. This will only push the armed groups to try to outdo each other in more and more violence. In early February a marine CH-46 helicopter crashed in the Sunni Al Anbar province west of Baghdad, killing 7 of the crew. Six of these have now been hit in less than 3 weeks, according to official figures. The means of destruction used in this shameful war are getting more and more deadly. The American army maintains that Iran is supplying arms to insurgents in Iraq. But as the Washington Postsaid of this type of allegation on 12 February “Is this deja vu all over again? Is the Bush administration once again building a faulty case for war, this time against Iran?” (Washington Post[10]).

The Middle East sinks into inter-imperialist massacres

America’s accelerating loss of control in the Middle East is stimulating the ferocious appetites of all imperialisms in the region. Iran is asserting itself more and more as a regional power. In Lebanon, in Iraq and wherever it is possible, it is pushing forward its Shiite pawns, thus participating actively in the wars and massacres going on. The United States is sending another fleet, led by the USS Stennis, to the Gulf. The mounting tensions in the Middle East have provoked a new nuclear arms race among the countries in the region. Last December the countries of the council for cooperation in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, announced a planned joint civil nuclear programme. In January they were joined by Jordan and the Yemen. These are countries which possess large reserves of oil and therefore of energy for non-military use. But equal to Iran in using the same alibi of civilian nuclear power, they are inevitably developing military nuclear programmes everywhere. For these Arab states in the Gulf, the growing power of Shiite Iran is intolerable. The whole Middle East, like Iraq, is in the process of splitting in two. Shiite and Sunni communities find themselves more and more opposed to each other and, within each camp, rival gangs are already tearing each other to pieces. There is not only the risk of the explosion of Iraq, but also the risk of the spread of civil war to the whole region, as in former Yugoslavia 14 years ago. Capitalism in the crisis of its senility is no longer able to hold back the development of barbarism and chaos. Tino 17/2/07 (from Revolution Internationale).

Recent and ongoing:

Middle East: Despite war, class struggle continues

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Most of the news that comes out of the Middle East tells us about the daily sectarian slaughter in Iraq, the brutal bombing of civilian populations by the USA and Israel in Iraq and Lebanon, bloody confrontations between Palestinian factions in Gaza, threats of a new military adventure in Iran… It is a constant litany of fratricidal conflict, dividing the population into Shia and Sunni, Muslim and Jew, Arab and Kurd.

Some people who claim to be in favour of a fundamental social change, who call themselves ‘socialists’ and ‘revolutionaries’, tell us that there is something in these conflicts that leads to the better world they say they are fighting for. That there is, contained within this spiral of nationalist and ethnic hatred, an ‘anti-imperialist’ struggle which should be supported by any true socialist. Thus we should back Hizbollah’s ‘resistance’ against Israel in the Lebanon, or the Palestinian ‘intifada’ in Gaza and the West Bank, or the attacks on US forces being carried out by sundry insurgent groups in Iraq.

This is a terrible and dangerous lie. These conflicts don’t in any way counter the domination of the world by the imperialist powers. In most cases, they only serve as proxy battles between different imperialist powers: as in Lebanon, where the ‘resistance’ to Israeli imperialism by Hizbollah serves the needs of the rising Iranian imperialism. Or - as in the case of the insane round of massacres between Sunni and Shia in Iraq – they express a tendency towards the complete collapse of society into chaos and war.

For genuine socialists or communists, the way towards a ‘better world’ lies through the united struggle of the exploited class, the proletariat, against its exploitation. It follows that when you have a ‘struggle’ which divides the proletarians against each other, which drags them into fighting battles on behalf of their exploiters, you are going not towards a better world but towards the catastrophic demise of the present one.

In the Middle East, the working class has been profoundly weakened by decades of nationalist and inter-imperialist confrontations. But its ability to stand up for its own needs has not been completely destroyed.

In WR 300 we wrote about the nearly simultaneous struggles by Palestinian public employees[12] against the non-payment of wages by the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories, on the one hand, and by Israeli public employees against the non-payment of their wages by the Israeli public authorities. We said that this represented a reaction by workers against the ferocious attacks on their living standards brought about by the permanent state of war in Israel and the occupied territories. Without any conscious unity of action between the Israeli and Palestinian workers, it showed the essential unity of their situation and their class interests, and thus shone as a glimmer of hope in the darkness of nationalist division and mutual revenge. Furthermore the issue of unpaid wages in Israel’s public sector has not gone away, as in late February the Histradut (Israeli trade union federation) was again sounding off about calling a new general strike, only to call it off again following talks with the government.

The fact that this expressed something brewing deep under the surface was confirmed in February when Israeli dock workers at the port of Ashdod came out on an unofficial strike against the agreement between employers and the union, the second such strike in the last year. The gulf between workers and trade unions was also shown in a recent demonstration by postal workers, in which workers invaded ‘their own’ trade union HQ during working hours. The workers, both Jews and Arabs, have been on temporary contracts on very low pay and were exasperated by the Histradut’s empty promises to campaign for permanent status. After demonstrating outside the building they decided to force their way inside to confront union boss Ofer Eyni.

Conflicts between workers and the Histradut have a long pedigree in Israel and some people argue that this is because the Histradut isn’t a ‘proper’ trade union, given that it is so deeply enmeshed in the Zionist state machine. In fact its anti-working class actions are typical of unions everywhere.

But the most important expression of the ‘old mole’ of the class struggle in this region has been the massive wave of strikes in Egypt over the past weeks. Over 35,000 workers in state-owned textile, cement and poultry plants, in mines and on the railways have held strikes and demonstrations in defence of jobs and wage levels, defying anti-strike laws and their enforcement by the trade unions. In December 18,000 textile workers at Mahalla north of Cairo came out against low pay and corruption, and have protested vigorously against their local union leadership for siding with management: they even went en masse to a meeting with government officials with the aim of impeaching their local union leader.

The Mahalla workers won an annual bonus and this has inspired other factories and sectors to follow their example. Attempts by the ruling party to blame the agitation on the Islamic militants of the Muslim Brotherhood have been specifically denied by the workers “When the ruling party has a bad dream, they wake up and blame the Muslim Brothers”, said Khalid Ali, a worker who was taking part in an occupation of the Kafr el-Dawwar factory. “You know why we’re striking? Conditions have reached a dismal level. It’s bad for workers all over Egypt” (Libcom, Feb '07[13]).

So far the government has been cautious in exerting direct repression against the workers, although its nervousness about any form of dissent was demonstrated recently when it arrested a number of bloggers for insulting Islam and other trumped up charges.

Conditions are indeed bad, and not just for the workers of Egypt. In the last year we have seen workers in numerous parts of the ‘underdeveloped’ world engaging in massive struggles in the face of increasingly unbearable living conditions. In Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, Dubai, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China, to name but a few. More recently we have seen a strike by health workers in Kashmir, and large scale strike movements in African countries like Guinea (see article in this issue) and Zimbabwe.

These struggles are all seeds that will grow into an international movement of mass strikes. But workers in many of these countries face enormous difficulties. Faced with openly corrupt and repressive regimes like in Guinea or Zimbabwe, it is difficult for workers to separate their own interests from those of the ‘democratic’ opposition, who are quite happy to ‘support’ workers’ strikes as a lever for propelling them towards power. In Palestine we saw the resistance of the public employees being manipulated by Fatah in its dispute with Hamas, while in Lebanon Hizbollah used workers’ discontent with government austerity measures to bolster their own efforts to push themselves towards power. In Egypt the fact that the unions are openly on the side of the state has led the most militant sectors – such as those at the Mahalla textile factory – to seek the answer to their problem in the formation of new independent trade unions.

This is why it is more than ever important for workers in the more central capitalist countries, those sectors of the class who have a deeper and longer historical experience of the delights of democracy, to develop a perspective for workers everywhere by developing their own struggles against capital and the state. Amos 28/2/7

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Guinea: workers’ struggle against bourgeois attacks

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Since 10 January, Guinea has been going through an explosive social situation, marked by a strike movement unprecedented even in a country which has seen many strikes over recent years. The workers in Conakry, followed by those in several other towns like Kankan, and actively supported by the population as a whole, have given active expression to their mounting discontent and thrown themselves into a movement of protest. In a country ruled with an iron fist by the president General Lansana Conté, successor to the pro-Stalinist Sekou Touré, the population has been subjected to greater and greater poverty. Consumer prices have increased by 30% since 1995. The policy of deliberate inflation followed by the government has had a devastating effect on living standards. Between 2001 and 2007, the Guinean franc has lost one third of its value: from 2000FG to the dollar in 2001, it’s gone to 6000FG to the dollar this year. One out of two Guineans live on less than a dollar a day; the annual wage for a worker is less than 20 dollars (120,000FG), while a sack of rice, the staple food of the population, went from 150,000 FG at the beginning of January to 250,000 after the strike of 10 January. Crushed by brutal exploitation on the one hand and the all-powerful police and military repression of Conte’s goons on the other, the workers of Guinea threw themselves with all their might into a struggle to demand wage increases and a reduction in the cost of rice. Last year, in June, Conakry had already been the scene of violent confrontations between striking students and the forces of order, leaving thirty dead. However, this didn’t deter the strikers from entering into struggle this time; on the contrary it reinforced their determination. As one demonstrator said: “we are already dead, so we have nothing to lose”. As for going back to work, people said “what work. There is none. And even those who have a wage can’t afford a sack of rice” (reported in Jeune Afrique).

Given this willingness to fight to the bitter end, the unions have had to put themselves at the head of the movement in order to derail it. Thus, the inter-union committee, led mainly by the Union General des Travailleurs de Guinea (USTG) added to the demands on wages and prices a call for the re-imprisonment of the ‘boss of Guinea’s bosses’, Mamadou Sylla, accused of dirty-dealings of all kinds but supported by the president-general. This fixation on corruption in the government, even if it is perfectly real, enabled the unions to put the nomination of a new prime minister as a precondition for a return to work and not the workers’ initial demands. Faced with an increasingly powerful movement that was paralysing the flow of all commodities through the port of Conakry, except for rice and sugar, the inter-union committee was able to bring the strike to an end on 28 January, even though the repression and its resulting 60 deaths had only served to strengthen the strikers’ resolve.

On 9 February, after 12 days of uneasy truce, Lansana Conté, who had not honoured any commitment on the wage demands or the payment of strike days, nominated as prime minister Eugene Kamara, one of his immediate circle, sparking off a new surge of anger in the population, the revival of the strike and a new wave of repression by the state which introduced martial law on 12 February. In this situation, the unions were again well placed to focus even more on the question of the government and the president, now calling for the resignation of Conté, whose forces of order, supported by troops from Liberia and Guinea-Bissau, killed another 50 people in Conakry, and others in various towns where the strike movement had gained ground and where symbols of the regime were systematically attacked: Coyah, Maferinya, Boké, Dalaba, Labé, Pita, Siuiri, N’zérékoré, etc.

Guinea is in a situation of political crisis which has been growing more intense every day. It is a sign of the times that on 24 February, the parliament, usually so obedient to the president, refused to approve the continuation of martial law. The local and international press has talked more and more about preparations for a military coup. The end of the regime has virtually been announced, and France has been sufficiently concerned to have dispatched the military cargo ship Sirocco to the gulf of Guinea to evacuate French nationals, while Chirac has talked about the intervention of French troops stationed in the region. Along with Darfur, Guinea was at the centre of the discussions at the last Franco-African summit in Cannes. The Organisation of African Unity, the UN and other bodies have made various announcements calling for calm and the peaceful regulation of a conflict which threatens to destabilise the whole region.

Although this anxiety on the part of the local and global bourgeoisie is real, their main desire is to put an end to the strike that has been paralysing the transport of bauxite, of which Guinea is the world’s main exporter.

The workers of Guinea need to know that if the good fairies of capital are focusing on them with such attention, it’s not at all because they want to accede to their demands. If Conté is kicked out, as seems likely, the situation of poverty they face will not improve. But the unions are doing all they can to make them think that a new government is the solution to all their ills and to get them back to work with little more than promises for tomorrow.

But beyond the necessity for the working class in Guinea and anywhere else to recognise the unions as false friends and struggle outside and against them, there’s no doubt that the situation of the workers in this country and the ideological barrage directed at them are making it more difficult for them to develop the struggle for their own class interests. This is why it’s up to the proletariat in the more advanced countries, where it is concentrated and powerful, to act as a catalyst for the development of autonomous workers’ struggles all over the planet. Mulan 24/2/07

Post-scirpt: The day after this article was written, the unions called off the general strike when Conté announced that he would replace Kamara with a prime minister more acceptable to them, Lansana Kouyate. But none of these shifts at the top will put food in workers’ stomachs.